Thanks for this information. It is very helpfful to me. One Word stands out. It is the name of San Marco de "Apalache" at Pennsacola. de preceeding a word indicates "Of" Is this the root name of Appalachian Mts, and the Applachain area? Does anyone know? It is intriguing as Pensacola is on the gulf coast. Though some might consider it the tail in of the Appalachian. Tallahassee is hilly, some steep hills, and is not that far from the San Marcas fort. Dr. Bob!

I don't think Helen's statement "Thousands and thousands of Spanish" is an exaggeration. One Spanish colony alone had almost 4,000 mixed blood people.

Janet Crain

<Quote>

At the same time the rival Spanish were penetrating the continent from the south, hoping to find rich cities or a sea lane to China. Francisco Coronado, spurred on by the report of Álvar Cabeza de Vaca, explored the southwest as far north as Kansas (1540-1542), and Juan Cabrillo and Bartolomé Ferrelo sailed north along the California coast (1542-1543). Simultaneously Hernando de Soto led a large expedition through the southeastern interior, spreading disease and destruction but finding no immediate wealth (1539-1542). When France later placed a colony of Huguenot exiles at Fort Caroline on Florida's St. Johns River, the Spanish promptly wiped out these anti-Catholic refugees in 1565 and founded their own outpost at St. Augustine that same year.

This first permanent settlement of Europeans and Africans provided protection for the gold fleet that sailed from Havana to Spain each spring. It also provided a base for missionaries and traders who explored as far north as Appalachia and Chesapeake Bay, establishing outposts in the Sea Islands and across northern Florida. With England's creation of Carolina in the 1660s and Georgia in the 1730s, St. Augustine became a launching site for attacks on these Protestant rivals and a refuge for Indians fleeing English slaving raids and Africans escaping plantation slavery. A massive stone fort was constructed and a sizable garrison community evolved in its vicinity, exchanging goods with Caribbean ports and receiving occasional coastal traders from the English colonies eager to obtain hard currency from the Spanish. But even including the western outposts at San Marcos de Apalache and Pensacola, the multiracial Florida colony remained small; it had fewer than four thousand inhabi!
tants when ceded to the English in 1763. (Florida was returned to Spain twenty years later and finally sold to the United States in 1819.)